Annotated Bibliography: Home Schooling

Article 1

Collom, E. (2005). The ins and outs of homeschooling the determinants of parental motivations and student achievement. Education and Urban Society,37(3), 307-335.

Collom (2005) is a quantitative study carried out at southern Californian, homeschoolers managed home charter. This homeschool is an organized effort of parents who prefer to homeschool their children instead of sending them out to regular schools. Primarily teachers or instructors are parents in this school and it entertains 551 homeschooled children representing 330 families. The researcher and the research idea was introduced to the parents in an assembly in order to establish a rapport with the subjects. Data gathered from this organized group of homeschoolers investigated two aspects of homeschooling. Firstly, the study analyzed the collected data to determine the factors which motivate parents to opt for homeschooling their children instead of sending them to regular schools. Secondly, the factors that determine the academic achievement of homeschoolers were identified. Regression analysis was used on the collected data for the stated purposes. The study found that parental educational attainment has an important role in their children’s academic achievement.  The parental educational attainment was positively and significantly related to students’ academic achievement. However, race and class were not found to be very significant predictors of academic performance. Major concerns working as motivation towards homeschooling were academic and pedagogical concerns. The study is directly related to my research topic and will be used as a base to make conclusions in my study.

Article 2

Rudner, L. M. (1999). The Scholastic Achievement of Home School Students. ERIC/AE Digest.

Rudner (1999) summarizes the demographic characteristics and academic achievement results for more than 20,000 homeschoolers. This is the largest study of home schooling conducted so far and released in Spring 1999. Data of 20,960 students representing 11930 families was collected for this study. For demographic data, parents were asked to fill a questionnaire “Voluntary Home-School Demographic Survey”, while students took Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITB) if they were K-8 and Test of Achievement and Proficiency (TAP) if they were in grade 9.

This study highlighted key findings of the study and concluded based on the analysis and findings. The study reports exceptionally high achievement scores on high school achievement tests, by homeschool students as compared to regular school students. Moreover, students who were homeschooled for their entire life show higher scholastic achievement test scores than others.

This source verifies the findings of other researchers discussed above regarding the better academic achievement of homeschoolers as compared to the regular school student. Hence this source will provide a significant role in the literature review.

Article 3

Ray, B. D. (2011). 2.04 million homeschool students in the United States in 2010. National Home Education Research Institute. Retrieved January, 2, 2011.

Ray (2011) is based on secondary data from sources like 50 government departments of United States, 5 national private organizations, several online surveys, published papers etc to estimate the extent to which homeschooling is prevailing in the region. This literature review paper estimated 2.04 million students being educated in homeschooling. These figures are as of Spring 2010. The significance of this source to my research is that it establishes the need for looking into this specific type of schooling unlike traditional schooling due to its increasing trend. I will use this source in introducing my topic and establishing the need for further efforts to identify issues and research them for the greater benefit of this major folk.

Article 4

Bielick, S. (2008). 1.5 million homeschooled students in the United States in 2007. US Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics.

Bielick (2008) reports on the number and percentage of homeschooled students using the 2007 findings of Parents and Family Involvement in Education Survey (PFI) in which data were collected on students of age 5 to 17 and education Kindergarten to 12^th Grade. Parents of a total of 10681 students were interviewed which included 290 homeschooled students. Weightage calculations showed that these data represented 51,135,000 students of 5-17 years age group. The quantitative research based on secondary data then compares these estimates with those of National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES) from 1999 and 2003. This report not only estimates the numbers but also analyzes and shows an increasing trend of homeschooling in United States. Additionally, this research report analyzes the reasons behind increasing trends in homeschooling and why do parents prefer to educate their children at homeschools rather than sending them to regular schools.

Major findings of this research are that homeschooling has increased in trend with the passage of time. Regarding the reasons as narrated by parents to prefer homeschooling over traditional schooling, the researchers found three major reasons: parents’ concern about school environment, parents’ concerns regarding providing religious education as they think religion is ignored in the curriculum, and their dissatisfaction with the poor instruction and lack of adequate instruction facilities.

This source is very important as it not only because it proves the large prevalence of homeschooling but also analyzes the reasons behind this type of schooling to help researchers and administrators of education.

Article 5

Blok, H. (2004). Performance in home schooling: an argument against compulsory schooling in the Netherlands. International review of Education,50(1), 39-52.

Blok (2004) surveys the available literature published after 1985 to analyze the differences in performance and academic achievement of homeschooled children in comparison to the students studying in regular/traditional schools. This literature based research analyzes secondary sources to study the developmental processes taking place in both homeschooled and traditional school children. This quantitative study uses literature from relevant research databases of social sciences. The key terms focused in the research are homeschool, homeschooling, home education and academic achievement. Due to limited available literature, this study also considered homeschooling websites to find related publications. In order to establish significant findings about the developmental process among homeschool children as well as regular school children, this study included eight studies on development of homeschooled children.

The significant conclusion of this study is that homeschool children perform better than children going to regular schools in terms of cognitive domains. However when it comes to socioemotional development, the differences/gaps are very insignificant. Findings of this research are important to help my research establish the arguments on performance aspects of homeschooling compared to traditional schooling.

Article 6

Ray, B. D. (2004). Homeschoolers on to College: What Research Shows Us. Journal of College Admission, 185, 5-11.

Ray (2004) puts forward many important findings from literature regarding several aspects of Homeschooling. In this 2004 version of his research literature review, Ray not only lists the reasons why parents prefer to homeschool their children, characteristics of homeschooled children, their parents and their contextual environment, but also provides very important insights on the academic performance and cognitive development of homeschooled students. Significant to my literature review are the findings of Ray regarding the academic performance of homeschooling.

As a result of 20 years of research by Ray and other researchers considering populations from single states to across the US and Canada, Ray found that homeschool children perform better than traditionally educated children from regular schools. He established that homeschooled children performed on the average 65^th to 80^th percentile while children from regular schools performed merely 50^th percentile on the same standardized academic achievement tests.

This literature based source is more significant to my literature review because not only its purpose matching the issue of my research but also because it is based on very rigorous review of literature as well as in depth research of 20 years by Ray.

Article 7

Parcel, T. L., & Dufur, M. J. (2001). Capital at home and at school: Effects on student achievement. Social Forces, 79(3), 881-911.

Parcel and Dufur (2001) is a quantitative research study based on primary data from National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and Child-Mother data from 1992 till 1994. Sample of study included 2203 students tested for reading recognition and 2034 for math achievement. The purpose of this quantitative study is to investigate the effects of family and school capital on academic performance of homeschooled students in the subjects of mathematics and reading proficiency. Subjects of the study included children from 1^st grade to 8^th grade.

Results of analysis found that family capital (human, financial, social) has stronger effects on students’ academic achievement in homeschooling. This source is significant in the sense that it will provide an insight into the effects of parental economic status on students’ academic achievement. The analysis will look for finding the links between economic status of parents and academic achievement of homeschooled children only.

Article 8

Cogan, M. F. (2010). Exploring Academic Outcomes of Homeschooled Students. Journal of College Admission, 208, 18-25.

Cogan (2010) carried out an exploratory investigation of academic achievement of homeschooled students in a doctoral higher education institution. Data used in this research was extracted from census file of the institution. One dataset consisting of 7,776 freshman students admitted in 2004 and 2009. These included 76 previously homeschooled students. The second dataset included the same group of students (6,424) excluding 2009 class. This included 70 homeschooled students. While the 3^rd dataset comprising all freshman (2,488) entering the institution between 2004 and 2005 including 27 homeschooled students.

Their analysis reveals that homeschool students show good GPAs and graduation rates compared to regular school students. However, binary logistic regression of the same data, with the same control variables, does not show a significant difference between homeschoolers and regular school students.

This study is another aspect of the issue. The study adds a unique dimension in to the investigation by exploring the long term effects of homeschooling on the academic achievement of the students. Therefore, this source is of utmost importance in my review of literature.

 

Article 9

Wessel, R. D., Bolle, M. B., & Mulvihill, T. M. (2007). Transitional experiences of first-year college students who were homeschooled. Journal of College Student Development, 48(6), 637-654.

This is a qualitative research where Wessel, Bolle, and Mulvihill (2007) tried to find and explain the experiences of homeschooled students who get into colleges. As homeschooled children have never been in a school environment with traditional pedagogical practices, college environment is totally new for them. The authors have carried out qualitative research to find out to what extent does this new experience influences the homeschooled students as compared to the traditionally schooled students.

The study found that college experience had not been much different for homeschooled students in comparison to the traditionally schooled students in terms of academic performance and activities. They had little issues with the new transition in terms of academics, however, the students had problems of loneliness, meeting with new people with different values, and meeting higher levels of interdependence. The authors have mentioned that orientations, assistance, guidance, and gatherings proved to be useful interventions to deal with such issues for homeschooled students.

This source is significant because new transition could have positive or negative impact on students’ performance at the higher level of education and the results can add useful insight into my literature review

Article 10

Snyder, M. (2011). An Evaluative Study of the Academic Achievement of Homeschooled Students versus Traditionally Schooled Students Attending a Catholic University. Online Submission.

The purpose of this qualitative study is evaluate the academic performance of homeschooled students compared to traditionally schooled students. The study was carried out at a Catholic university in South Florida where around 30% of the current students had been homeschooled. A total of 408 students’ data was analyzed including 137 public schooled, 142 Catholic schooled and 129 homeschooled students. To measure the differences in academic performance, SAT, ACT, College GPA, GPA by major and core GPA were considered for analysis.

The results showed significant difference between homeschooled students and traditionally schooled students in ACT, SAT and overall GPA. This study is significant to my review since it provides direct findings related to my research topic and questions.